Research uses gene therapy for depression

Based on early studies, researchers reported Wednesday that there may be reason to think that mental illnesses such as depression could be treated with gene therapy.

Severe depression afflicts at least one in 15 adults nationwide.

The study, in the Science Translational Medicine journal, of mice and human brain cells finds that a deficit of a protein called "p11" may play a role in depression and that fixing the genes that produce those proteins could affect the course of depression.

"Psychological disorders, such as depression, are increasingly viewed as brain disorders," says study author Michael Kaplitt of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

"If true, we may be able to help some patients by bringing levels of this protein back to normal."

Most modern depression drugs aim to affect brain levels of the hormone serotonin, which was recently linked to p11 in its effects on mood.

So, Kaplitt and colleagues, who included Nobel Prize-winning brain-cell researcher Paul Greengard of Rockefeller University in New York City, first sought to cure mice bred to have depressive symptoms such as listlessness by infecting the "reward center" of their brain with a virus carrying a gene for the protein.

The team has pioneered safety experiments aimed at treating human Parkinson's patients with gene therapy.